Hyatt Hotels Corporation has committed to developing wellbeing initiatives for both guests and the people it employs. Its global head of wellbeing explains why Well Home matters

Mia Kyricos is senior vice president and global head of wellbeing for Hyatt Hotels Corporation

As someone who’s worked in wellness for the last two decades, I can’t help but think that we’re living in amazing times.

Wellness is no longer a fad which is dictated to us on the cover of a magazine. It’s a global movement which the hands of time have no chance of turning back.

It’s about a shared desire to live healthier, longer and more fulfilling lives than those before us. It spans multiple generations, and fortunately, is fueled by a greater awareness and understanding of the science behind it.

I’ve been watching this shift for quite some time. Earlier in my career, I was focused on the luxuries of travel, including the development and operation of spa facilities around the world.

It was there I learned about health and wellness and began to contemplate what the implications might be for all of us, if only we had access to the same support.

Later I gained insights into the health and wellness of sedentary people, partnering with the executive teams of corporations who were driven by the desire to reduce employee healthcare costs.

Our focus was on the nutritional, physical, emotional and mental health of each individual, but we paid less heed to the environments within which people worked and lived.

Fast forward to 2013 when I had the privilege to work alongside a small group of individuals at the Global Wellness Institute who identified and defined “wellness tourism” – travel associated with maintaining or enhancing your personal wellbeing – as a sector of the economy that was growing twice as fast as global tourism.

While this was a great moment in time for those of us who worked in travel, I began to wonder what would happen if we shifted our focus from where people would only visit, to where they call home.

Now, years later, we’ve started to look at the houses, buildings, and communities within which we all live, and as it turns out, I haven’t been the only one thinking along these lines.

For years, I’ve watched the team behind Well Home bring magazines to market and the forefront of our industry that have been professionally and personally meaningful to me – from spa and wellness and health and fitness to architecture and design. I’ve looked to them to help make sound business sense from advancements in these fields, complemented by changes in society at large. Today is no different.

Well Home has been designed to showcase and explain what it means to live well, with care for the environment that surrounds us and respect for the fact that how we move, fuel, play and think are not the only things that affect our wellbeing.

We’re now smart enough to know that it’s the environments we choose to surround ourselves with that impact our health and wellness, and thanks again to our friends at Leisure Media, who will now help to teach us how.

So sit back, grab a healthy beverage and enjoy the magazine. And let’s toast to a well world together.

• Mia Kyricos is senior vice president and global head of wellbeing for Hyatt Hotels Corporation and founding chair of the Wellness Communities Initiative for the Global Wellness Institute.

Mia has also served as Senior Leader and strategic advisor for wellness-driven hospitality, tourism, travel and healthy lifestyle companies globally.